If we reduce the phenomenon of mirror reflection to a purely abstract scheme, we realize that it does not imply any phenomena of the dark-chamber kind (Figure 7.1) and that there is no crossing of rays (Figure 7.2). It is only when we anthropomorphize the virtual image that we are puzzled by right and left— that is, only at this point do we start wonder-ing what right and left would be if the virtual image were the real object.
FIGURE 7.1
FIGURE 7.2
In front of a mirror we should not speak of inversion but, rather, of absolute congruence: the same congruence we observe when we press blotting paper onto a page written with fresh ink. If then I cannot read what is printed on the blotting paper, it depends on my reading habits rather than on the relation of congruence (and, in fact, I can read it by using a mirror, that is, by reversing to a second congruence, as it hap-pens with laterally opposed mirrorsSn the bathroom). This again means that mankind had more time to learn how ‘to read’ mirrors than to read blotting paper (except Leonardo). And on blotting paper writing appears reversed with respect to grammatological rules, but, if we consider it as an actual imprint, ink signs are exactly where the paper was lying. Men can use mirrors just because they know that there is no man in the mirror and that the man to whom right and left are to refer is the observer and not the (virtual) individual who seems to be looking at the observer.
All this shows us how difficult it would be to speak of mirrors as if we spoke of them before knowing and experiencing them (and we can easily imagine how dismayed the baby is at the fatal stage when he/she does not yet know his/her body). When grown up, we are the way we are just because we are (also) catoptric animals and have developed a double ability to look at ourselves (insofar as it is possible) and the others in both our and their perceptive reality and catoptric virtuality. Of course, we do use mirrors more easily with respect to our body than to someone else’s. Just now, while writing, I am facing a mirror reflecting a door with a handle, behind me. Before deciding whether the door handle is on the right or on the left (whose right and left?) or how I should move my arm (backward) in the event I wanted to throw my lighter and hit the handle, I first check with and on my body. I should move my right hand backward, toward my left shoulder, behind which I see the handle. Done! I almost hit it. Now I know (but I knew it also before trying) that, if I turned around, the handle would be on my right. But I had to reckon with an inverted image, because I was actually aiming (with my eyes) at the virtual image of the door in the mirror. It was my problem. Between the mirror and the door (both lacking organs of perception) there was no relation of inversion.
7.5. A pragmatics of the mirror
We usually know how to use mirrors correctly. This means that we have introjected the rules of catoptric interaction. It means also that we are to speak of a pragmatics of the mirror. It is no use arguing that, since prag-matics is a branch of semiotics, we cannot speak of it before defining semiotic phenomena. I have said already that we must get into the circle from somewhere. On the other hand, in this connection we may as well use the term pragmatics’ in a rather broad sense, to cover also percep-tive interaction. The problem is that, in order to use a mirror correctly, we should first know that we are facing a mirror (which is an essential condition also in Lacan’s study, for the mirror not to be a sheer illusion or a hallucinatory experience).
Once we have acknowledged that what we perceive is a mirror image, we always begin from the principle that the mirror ‘tells the truth’. And it is so true that it does not even bother to reverse the image (as a printed photograph does to give us an illusion of reality). The mirror does not even allow us this tiny advantage that would make our percep-tion or our judgment easier. A mirror does not ‘translate’; it records what struck it just as it is struck. It tells the truth to an inhuman extent, as it is well known by those who —facing a mirror—cannot any longer de-ceive themselves about their freshness. Our brain interprets retinal data; a mirror does not interpret an object.
But it is just this Olympian, animal, inhuman nature of mirrors that allows us to trust them. We trust mirrors just as, under normal condi-tions, we trust our organs of perception. Now it is clear why I spoke of pragmatics: with mirrors, we can apply some of the rules which, by social convention and very relatively, are applied to conversational interactions, although in conversation lies are reckoned as breaches. It is not so with mirrors.
7.6. The mirror as a prosthesis and a channel
We trust mirrors just as we trust spectacles and binoculars, since, like spectacles and binoculars, mirrors are prostheses. In a strict sense, a prosthesis is an apparatus replacing a missing organ (an artificial limb, a denture); but, in a broader sense, it is any apparatus extending the range of action of an organ. This is why we can also consider hearing aids, megaphones, stilts, magnifying lenses, periscopes as prostheses.
A prosthesis extends the organ range of action according to the organ mode of action, but it may have either a magnifying (like a lens) or a reducing (pliers extend our fingers’ prehension, but eliminate thermic and tactile sensations) function. In this sense, a mirror is an absolutely neu-tral prosthesis, and it allows us to catch visual stimuli from where our eye could not reach (in front of our own body, around the corner, in a hole) with the eye’s same evidence and force. A mirror may at times work as a reducing prosthesis (curved mirrors or smoked mirrors, where the per-ception of intensity ratios is privileged over the perception of wave lengths).
Prostheses may be merely extensive (like a lens) or intrusive (like a periscope or certain specula used by physicians): mirrors may serve both functions (that is, a mirror may be used to extend the eye’s reach as if we had a visual organ on our forefingers). Even barbers’ en abime mirrors have an intrusive function. The magic of the mirror lies in the fact that their extensiveness-intrusiveness allows us both to have a better look at the world and to look at ourselves as anybody else might; it is a unique experience, and mankind knows of no other similar one.
And, since mirrors are prostheses, they are channels, too. A channel is any material medium for the passage of information (the notion of infor-mation is here a physical one, that is, information as a passage of stimuli-signals which can be quantitatively measured, not yet connected with semiotic phenomena). Not all channels are prostheses, because they do not all necessarily extend an organ range of action (for example, air is the channel through which sound waves travel), whereas all prosth-ases are channels or media. There may also be a channel of a channel, for instance, if you use a mirror to reflect the rays by which somebody is modulating Morse signals, the mirror is a primary channel conveying light (it may act as a prosthesis if it magnifies the ray power or if, in a system of mirrors reflecting one another, it allows you to catch the rays reflected in an original mirror, which is beyond your eye’s reach). But reflected light rays, in their turn, become a secondary channel conveying the features pertaining to the Morse code. In any case, this phenomenon concerning the reflection and channeling of light rays has nothing to do with mirror images.
If we identify mirrors as channels, we can easily dispose of the cases when a mirror image is used as the symptom of a presence. For instance, if I look at a mirror located vertically in front of me and diagonally to the plane of observation, I can see human shapes moving in the adjacent room. In this case, too, the mirror acts as a prosthesis, but we might think that—since mirror images are the symptoms of someone’s pres-ence elsewhere — it might have semiotic functions. However, any chan-nel when working is a symptom of the existence of
